2014 Round-Up: a busy year!

2014 has now come to a close with many newly fledged doctors having found their feet on the wards since August and another new year group of medical students joining universities around the world for their first year of study.

OSCE-Aid has now finished its 3rd year of our online endeavour and over recent months we have tried to look at how we can provide a more holistic revision experience. The past year has seen the creation of a new 'Common Cases' series of presentations looking at how to interpret examination signs and discuss syndromes in an OSCE setting. 2014 has also seen the development of our face-to-face revision course with over 200 students attending our two revision days. We have also developed our mobile revision website to allow students to use our resources on-the-go, and yesterday we released our revamp of www.osce-aid.co.uk. We have brought new faces to the team, and we've dramatically expanded the size of our online community - ie the number of you who have signed up to the site. Throughout this we have tried to continue to work on our classic revision resources and online link database. We've even shown our face at a medical innovations conference or two!

Of course, there is much more to be done, and 2015 will be busy. We will be releasing many more resources on our new-look website, as well as trying to roll out our revision course to more of you. Watch this space, as they say. More importantly though, we realise that we need to continue to improve the basics - how can we provide clear, robust, useful revision resources and continue to generate discussion amongst you, the students? Your thoughts are always welcome, either through our online feedback, or direct to our mailbox at .

What about the wider medical world? Medicine is constantly changing, and medical education changes alongside. There is a push in both undergraduate and postgraduate education for 'competency based assessment' (what is competency?!), and curricula are trying to change to promote more professional development and prepare for life of the wards. Alongside this there is a (well-deserved) push for patient safety, with medical students more and more involved in the process of audit and service evaluation during their clinical attachments. The positive view on this is that it is a beneficial process that gives students experience in clinical governance, as well as providing hospitals with more enthusiastic volunteers to effect positive change. The field of medical ethics and law is another fast-changing field at the moment, with the news frequently filled with new rulings on high-court cases (e.g. the 2014 rulings on family discussions regarding DNACPR decisions), and frequently controversial political statements about medical practice and the NHS.

Where does this leave OSCE-Aid? Well, in order to continue to keep up and remain relevant, we will be starting a blog which might cover some of the hot topics in medical education. Hopefully our posts will provide a useful adjunct to exam revision, and provide a bit more of a forum for offering views and opinions. Don't fear though, our revision resources will remain geared towards medical school curriculum and passing exams!

With the very best wishes from the OSCE-Aid team for your 2015,

Joel


written by: joel_cunningham, first posted on: 02/01/15, 13:57

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